Mea culpa. That's the only way I can honestly write anything about getting older kids to eat healthy foods. Because I've been a sucker for the look my 11-year-old gets on her face if I plop down a bowl of nuclear-orange SpongeBob mac-and-cheese in front of her. Sheer joy: that's the only way to describe it. Ditto for the times she eats (can I admit this?) Cookie Crisp cereal, high-fructose corn syrup laced yogurt, and the occasional bag of Doritos -- chips that look toxic enough to qualify as their own Superfund sites.

How have I sunk so low? That age-old problem, complacency, set in, combined with the fact that my daughter in recent years has become increasingly picky and health-food hostile. I let the junk into her life just so she'd eat something -- anything -- with enthusiasm.

The good news? I've turned a corner, thanks to this denial-busting assignment from Grist, with additional thanks to nationally known nutritionist Cynthia Sass, a New York City-based registered dietitian, health expert, and author of the book Your Diet is Driving Me Crazy. Give kids the information they need, Sass convinced me, and they're going to want to eat right.

"What older children need is a basic understanding about this stuff -- about the chemicals and additives and fats and sugars and how it affects their bodies," she says. "Kids are great critical thinkers."

The pickiest fifth-grader and the most eye-rolling teen are equally devoted to taking control of their lives, in the food department and all others, she says. Engage their smarts and their natural sense of outrage -- about the disodium inosinate in those Doritos and the pesticide residue on that peach -- and they'll become allies in the food fight.

"The key is to avoid trying to trick them, or sway them, or force them to clean their plate or eat in a certain way," Sass says. Playing the food cop when they're downing the junky stuff "really pushes them toward those foods."

By sleuthing with your kids instead of for them -- reading labels and finding out together what foods have nasty additives and which fruit juices have no fruit in them and how that strange purple vegetable from the farmers' market actually tastes -- you engage them and bond with them, too.

Simple enough. I asked my daughter this week to read me the label on her maple syrup, which had not a single ingredient that was vaguely related to a maple tree. She was outraged.

Among Sass's other recommendations:

• Take children to farmers' markets (check out localharvest.org for a nationwide directory). Put them in charge of picking a different food each time; ask them to choose a variety of colors (they'll get good phytonutrients along the way).
  
  
• Get them cooking and gardening. Kids who help in the kitchen, pick out recipes, and grow the foods they love are likely to love what they eat.
  
  
• Create healthy cravings by celebrating with healthy comfort foods. If kids equate cake, ice cream, and candy with birthdays and other special times, they're likely to have a yen for those foods all their lives.
  
  
• Make healthy, organic foods available in the fridge and on the table -- and eat those foods yourself. Studies show that one of the greatest influences on eating habits in children up to age 18 is what their parents eat.
  
  
• Appeal to your kid's inner rebel. Tweens and teens are highly offended by unfairness, hidden agendas, and con jobs. Watch the documentary Supersize Me with them or give them Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation and you might inspire more food activism than you dreamed possible.